1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a new arrangement or system for composing—e.g., supported by the acoustic playback during and/or after the completion of a musical composition—tones, tonal sequences, tone clusters, sounds, sound sequences, sound phrases, musical works, compositions or the like and for the acoustic, scored or other playback of the same, that can be played on and rendered by preferably a plurality of virtual musical instruments corresponding to real musical instruments and providing their tones or sounds, preferably in an ensemble formation such as, e.g., in chamber music, orchestra formation or the like.
2. Discussion of Background Information
The following should be explained about the printed publications concerning the background of the prior art in this field:
EP 0899 892 A2 describes a proprietary extension of the known ATRAC data reduction process as used, e.g., on minidisks. This document discloses nothing more than that the invention described there—like many others—is concerned with digitally processed audio.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,886,274 A describes a proprietary extension of the known MIDI standard which makes it possible to connect sequencer data, i.e., playing parameters of a piece of music, with sound data such that a platform-independent parity of the played back piece is guaranteed. It primarily concerns a distribution of MIDI and meta data over the Internet that is as consistent as possible.
A data-related mix of play and sound parameters is provided there. The sound production is conventional in its approach (see FIG. 1). The output devices are merely the objective, but not the source in the flow chart. A feedback loop as regards content from the synthesizer to the sequencer is not rendered possible.
FR 2 643 490 describes a method for computer-aided music notation-nowadays technically already realized in many cases in a similar way or developed much further; the computer-based notation is naturally a necessary feature, but one that is limited there to the three meters 4/4, ¾ or 2/4 (compare FIG. 4, center).
U.S. Pat. No. 5,728,960 A describes the problems and possibilities for realization of computer-aided note display and transformation, primarily with regard to contemporary rehearsal and performance practice. “Virtual sheets of music” are thereby produced in real time. In “Conductor Mode” the possibility of a processor-aided processing of a video recorded conducting against a blue screen (see FIG. 9) is considered. There is no reference at all to a virtual/synthetic realization from an intelligently connected sound database.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,783,767 A describes the computer-aided transformation of the control data of a melodic input to a harmonic output—it possibly refers to a logic on which an automatic accompaniment is based, but no bi-directional connection between musical/compositional input and sound result is provided or at least considered there, either. The “Easy Play Software” entry in FIG. 15 also indicates this in particular.